North Bay Rowing Club finishes strong at Foster City competition

(1 of )ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT: The best place to watch the Wine Country Rowing Classic Regatta is at Shollenberger Park.

ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

ARGUS-COURIER STAFF | November 14, 2017

The North Bay Rowing Club finished its fall racing season with three gold medals and one bronze medal in the 22nd Anniversary of the Head of the Lagoon in Foster City.

The regatta included teams from 22 clubs from Seattle to Los Angeles.

“I am really happy to head into winter training with some momentum,” said NBRC head coach Will Whalen. “All of the squads raced well against great competition. It’s great to see all of their hard work pay off.”

Race conditions were ideal on the curvy 5K course that was protected from wind and currents.

The first win of the day for NBRC came in the first race, the Mens Lightweight 8+ (Patrick McDermott, Will Griffin, Michael Francheschi, Michael McDermott, Ben Kropelnicki, Miko Brown, Jake Statz, Bradley Hogin and Ren Demsher). The boat covered the course in 17 minutes, 52 seconds and outpaced the competition by more than one minute.

The lightweights kept their winning ways going with a hard-fought victory in the Mens Lightweight 4+ (Patrick McDermott, Will Griffin, Miko Brown, Michael Franchecschi and Ren Demsher), beating the second-place boat by less than a tenth of a second. “It was impressive to see the guys hop out of the 8 and into the 4 and win both,” commented Whalen.

The Womens Novice 4+ (Livija Langberg, Megan Popielak, Ella Keefer, Ella Berger and Hannah Cooper) finished the medal count for North Bay with a 30-second win over second place Rogue Rowing from Ashland, Oregon.

“It’s really exciting to see this kind of success in such a hotly-contested boat class this early in the season,” said novice girls coach Steve Genise. “This puts us in a good position looking towards the spring when we’ll face tougher local and regional competition.”

This was the last race of the fall for NBRC. The squad will be back in action in February for the sprint season, where races are all head-to-head instead of time trial and shortened to 2,000 meters.